Professor Pedro Urra
Current Position: Director in the National Center for Medical Sciences Information- INFOMED, Cuban Ministry of Public.
· 1984: He majored with honors in the Cuban Highest Institute of Foreign Affairs- ISRI.
· 1984-1991: He was a professor at ISRI. He devoted himself to informatics and information. He had several post grade courses on these subjects. He introduced informatics in that specialty and he was in charged of creating the department for technical scientific information, automation process of this department and cooperated in the automation process of the chancellery.
· He participated in international courses as in the Center of International Negotiation of Geneva directed by Jean Freymond and in the projects of information and automation in UNCTAD.
· 1989: He was part of the delegation that visited Harvard University to exchange experiences and participating in simulation of United Nations where he was in charge of documentation and automation.
· He was member of the Cuban delegation that visited the Canada National College of Defense for professional exchange for the further formation of a similar kind of College in Cuba.
· He developed systems for automation of libraries and indexation systems which were introduced in library systems and net information centers of Cuba highest education centers, and in numerous libraries in Latin America.
· He collaborated in automation tasks with the documentation center of UNESCO Regional Office of Culture for Latin America and the Caribbean.
· He was in charge by UNESCO to evaluate the automation project of the National Library in the Republic Argentina whose report and recommendations were bases of the automation project in the center and he worked in the development of the library net project through Internet as well as in the retrospective reconverting plans of their funds.
· He has given specialized courses on Internet for UNAMAZ, UNESCO, and the Pan-American Organization of the Health, the Latin American and Caribbean Center of Information in Health Sciences, BIREME among others.
· He participated in the international Beta Test for the evaluation of BITNIS system for the access to the databases MEDLINE in deferred way of the National Library of Medicine of the USA.
· Since 1992 he works in the Cuba National Center of of Medical Sciences Information where he has been leading Infomed which arose as a project of UNDP as coordinator.
· He is director of the net resulting of Infomed proyect which is the Cuban net that offers services from Internet to the health sector and that is responsible for the Health Web.
· He coordinates the project of Cuba Virtual Health Library.
· He was founder of the Cubaweb project together with other members. This is the first Cuba Web in Internet and which was developed originally in Infomed.
· He was selected by the general director of the Pan-American Health Organization to be part of the Evaluation Commission of the information system of PHO-BIREME that visited several countries of the region to interview national authorities of these countries related to the America Virtual Health Library.
· He has collaborated with the regional Bureau of UNDP for AL and C in the Net project of sustainable development and its informatics process strategy.
As consultant:
· He has carried out different consultantship and evaluation missions for UNESCO and Pan-American Organization of the Health, PAHO since 1992.
· PAHO to evaluate the project of informatic process of the Health Ministry in Ecuador and the installation of the Health Virtual Library in that country elaborating strategy and recommendations for the system automation.
· He works at the regional center of Pan-American Health Organization for the installation of this regional project.
· For the development of the Health Virtual Library project in Jamaica.
· UNESCO in their project for the development of the Digital Library of Latin America and the Caribbean.
· He participated in a evaluation mission of the UNDP Regional Project for informatics process for the administration of chancelleries and presidencies of the Republic in Paraguay and Uruguay.
· He was adviser for automation projects and Web integration in the National Library of Venezuela and he advised the automation project in the Library of the Central University of Venezuela.
· He was an advisor of the Foundation of Medical Informatics in Argentina and collaborated with the editorial projects ¨Health, Information Society and Developing Countries¨ and ¨Internet, Telematics and Health¨ coordinated by the European Commission DG XIII.
Also
· He is regular professor and auxiliary investigator of the Faculty of Communication of the University of the Habana.
· He is member of national commissions for the informatics of the Cuban society in topics related with Internet and he collaborates systematically with national institutions as regards informatics and nets.

